With most of us stuck inside our homes as we attempt to stay safe and healthy, adhering to the social distancing and lockdown guidelines that have been instituted to fight COVID-19 spread, rewatching old films and TV series, as well as trying to track down new and exciting options has been keeping film fans sane. Thankfully, with the social distancing still a very real thing for the next several weeks, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro recently went to Twitter to ask his filmmaker friends to share their watchlist for what they’ve been enjoying during the lockdown.
READ MORE: Edgar Wright Reveals His 100 Favorite Comedies, For Your Self-Quarantine Enjoyment
Del Toro kicked things off with his watchlist, “Been rewatching Mitchell Leisen: Easy Living, Death Takes a Holiday, Midnight, Hold back the Dawn, etc etc Leisen was (in his time) relegated as being a ‘Stylist’ and unfavorably compared to Sturges or Wilder (sometimes by Wilder himself) with whom he collaborated.”
Edgar Wright offered up some of his recommendations, tweeting, “Some of the new discoveries (or rewatches of films I’d seen as a kid) that I loved were: the WWII Powell & Pressburgers, This Happy Breed, the War Trilogy, the post war noir of It Always Rains On Sunday and Waterloo Road, Le Silence De La Mer, Late Spring (only 4 years later).”
“Hereditary” and “Midsommar” filmmaker Ari Aster also contributed with his watchlist, tweeting, “I’ve been rewatching Sopranos season 3, which is a supreme work of art. Also been rewatching the TV version of ‘Scenes from a Marriage.’ It’s been a comfort to watch two morbidly disenchanted people decimate each other in the comfort and privacy of THEIR homes…Recently watched ‘Reds’ on Amazon Prime, which also has the benefit of being long and is swooningly romantic, which, as a single person, makes me want to cut off my hands and replace them with my feet (also a comfort in these trying times). Nicholson as Eugene O’Neill is a treat…Also going back through all of Jacques Tati, which is great because it reminds you that everything is absurd (while lying to you that everything is also adorable).”
You can see del Toro, Wright, Aster’s full recommendations below, as well as other filmmakers such as James Gunn, Sarah Polley, James Mangold, Joe Lynch, Corin Hardy, and more. Honestly, you could take a while collecting all the suggestions in the Twitter thread. Happy watching!